Free Republic

Last month my brother-in-law passed unexpectedly from a massive heart attack. He appeared to be in good shape, he worked out and even had is annual physical a week prior to his passing. He had just purchased a house that he was going to remodel and had a really good job. He was 46 years old. Far too young to be leaving us by our standards. He was loved. The good news is that I know he was a Christian. Perhaps not the ideal but he was a baptized believer in Christ. I know in my heart that he is...

House Republicans, unveiling their first budget blueprint since the party took control of Congress, issued a sweeping spending plan Tuesday that calls for complete repeal of ObamaCare, major changes to Medicare and controversial moves to boost defense spending despite tight budget limits. GOP leaders say their budget would balance in less than 10 years, and in that time cut spending by $5.5 trillion compared with current projections. The spending plan stands little chance of ever being signed by President Obama, but makes clear that the party is not dialing back its ambitions despite a rocky start to the latest congressional...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 25 more reasons why it’s OK to laugh at anyone who thought Obamacare was a good idea I’ve updated my list of Obamacare criticisms. The complete list can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/These are the new entries:307) Obamacare, when combined with Obama’s executive amnesty, gives employers a $3,000 annual incentive, per employee, to hire illegal aliens instead of U.S. citizensObamacare, when combined with Obama’s November 2014 executive amnesty, gives employers a $3,000 annual incentive, per employee, to hire illegal aliens instead of U.S. citizens.308) Obama administration falsely overstated the number of Obamacare signups by incorrectly including dental...

The costs of providing health insurance are staggering under the ACA: Small businesses, which are the least able to handle cost increases, report paying an average of $11,868 more per employee per year since the ACA’s passage. Large companies have also seen their costs increase. As a result, some of them have cut employee hours to avoid triggering the coverage requirement altogether. Nor is this only happening in the private sector. Public school systems from coast to coast have been effected. K-12 districts have limited hours for their support staff, including janitors, drivers, cafeteria workers, and teachers. As one school...

Could employer-provided health insurance be going the way of employer-sponsored pension plans? Rick Lindquist, president of Zane Benefits, which specializes in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses, says: Not only could it happen; it’s happening already. Lindquist and Paul Zane Pilzer (who founded Zane Benefits), argue that case in their new book, “The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance.” As surprising as you may find the title, get a load of its subtitle: “Why It’s Good for You, Your Family and Your Company.” Lindquist and Pilzer’s company stands to profit if employers shift from traditional health insurance and toward their...

IT is time to talk about President Obama’s contingency plan for health care. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this month in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the provision of tax credits on federal insurance exchanges. While the legal issues are dry lawyers’ fare — how to interpret several interconnected phrases of the Affordable Care Act — the practical stakes are high. The government estimates that millions of Americans will be left without affordable health insurance if it loses. While the administration may well prevail, it has expressed remarkable pessimism about its options if it does lose. The...

A leading medical group added new fuel to a budding health care controversy on Friday by recommending that women delay their first cervical-cancer screening until age 21 instead of starting the test three years after becoming sexually active Continues...================================================================== Say, didn't a certain someone mention 'Death Panels'? The "U.S. Preventive Services Task Force" -- otherwise known as Palin's "mythical" *Death Panel* which oddly would cease being "mythical" if ObamaPelosiReidCare became law -- is worried that too many American women in their 40s are having their breasts examined. With precision timing, two weeks after National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the government...

Several million people hit with new federal fines for going without health insurance will get a second chance to sign up starting Sunday, and that could ease the sting of rising penalties for being uninsured. But as the enrollment window reopens, it’s unclear how many know about the time-limited opportunity, let alone will take advantage of it. Fines payable to the IRS are the stick behind the offer of taxpayer-subsidized private insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Virtually everyone in the country is now required to have coverage through an employer or a government program, or by buying...

Will the government ever publish graphs, charts, info on where the money they get for Obammy Care is going?

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is touting the budgetary benefits of Medicaid expansion under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The potential Republican presidential contender said Tuesday during a town hall event in Somerville that Medicaid expansion has helped save New Jersey significant money. […] Christie has been a vocal critic of Obama’s signature health care program. But he says expanding Medicaid was the right decision for New Jersey. …

Nearly 8 million people could lose up to $24 billion a year in health insurance subsidies in a Supreme Court case threatening President Barack Obama’s law, according to a government report released Tuesday. The estimates by The Associated Press show what’s at stake in the case. Health overhaul opponents argue that subsidies are illegal in some three dozen states where the federal government took charge of running the health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges. The justices heard arguments last week, and the court’s decision is expected in late June. Tuesday’s report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that...

It's going to be at least a few weeks, and probably a few months, before we know what the Supreme Court is going to do with Obamacare. But Wednesday's oral arguments in King v. Burwell have already made something very clear: Justice Antonin Scalia isn't too worried about intellectual consistency. Among the many issues that came up Wednesday were the likely consequences if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, thereby prohibiting the federal government from distributing Obamacare's tax credits in two-thirds of the states. Millions of people depend on those tax credits to purchase health insurance; without the...

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A bill dissolving Cover Oregon, the state's dysfunctional health insurance exchange, has been signed by Gov. Kate Brown. The measure, which had bipartisan support, transfers responsibilities for the Oregon exchange to the state Department of Consumer and Business Services. The decision was announced in a nine-word tweet from Brown's account, which said simply: "This afternoon I signed Senate Bill 1 into law." She signed the legislation Friday. Cover Oregon was plagued by problems almost from its onset. No Oregonian was ever able to enroll online in a private plan under the Affordable Care Act because the state exchange never had...

Kentucky is one place in America where a tea-party firebrand and a Republican from the governance wing amicably meet.For two Republican senators from the same state, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell could not be more mismatched. Senator Paul is a man in a hurry, with presidential stars in his eyes after a mere four years of serving Kentucky in Washington. The loquacious libertarian is a darling of young conservatives – a relaxed jeans-and-boots kind of guy. Senator McConnell, after three patient decades in office, has finally reached his dream job of Senate majority leader. A man of few words, he’s...

In an open letter released on Tuesday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said he would sign legislation banning most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, the point after which infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely. "As the Wisconsin legislature moves forward in the coming session, further protections for mother and child are likely to come to my desk in the form of a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks. I will sign that bill when it gets to my desk and support similar legislation on the federal level," Walker wrote. "I was raised to believe in...

John Adams, in a 1775 essay referencing the Roman historian Livy and other sources, wrote that a republic was “a nation of laws, not of men.” As recently as fifty years ago, most Americans would have intuitively understood his point and why it was relevant to their lives. Today, it isn’t clear that the President of the United States, the leaders of the Democratic Party, or the members of our “news” media would grasp the meaning of Adams’ words, much less that they still matter today. We will soon discover if the same can be said of the Supreme Court....

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- The claim by Melinda Gates, a Catholic, that the multi-billion dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does not fund abortion is "an outright deception," says Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International. Gates has made headlines in recent days after she wrote June 2 that the foundation "has decided not to fund abortion."

Bill Gates and friends have developed a simple system to convert human feces into electricity, fresh water and pathogen-free ash – and no stink! In a quest to find a way to end the tragic death of more than 700,000 children annually from drinking bad water, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has sponsored a variety of waste treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Janicki Bioenergy develops and manufactures a variety of sizes of this system. It uses the combustible biomass (roughly 20% of the feces) to heat mass quantities to ~2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The super-heated steam from...

YouTube/thegatesnotesBill Gates has taken to his blog to discuss the latest project from the philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: a machine that transforms human waste into clean water and electricity. According to Gates, at least 2 billion people worldwide don't have access to adequate sanitation, with human waste often polluting the water supply and remaining untreated.The "Omniprocessor" aims to help with this problem. Its development is led by Seattle-based engineering firm Janicki Bioenergy.The machine extracts water from sewage that's piped in or delivered to the facility. The dry sewage is then incinerated to generate steam, which powers the entire...